


I, Too, Am Waiting For You

by Deisderium



Series: Happy Steve Bingo 2018 [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: A Certain Amount of Handwavium Required, A Lower Amount of Fluff Than Previously Established in this Series, Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Recovering, But Not Altogether Without Fluff, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Crack Treated Seriously, Devotion, Happy Steve Bingo, Happy Steve Bingo 2018, M/M, On the Instagrams, Social Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 01:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16295771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deisderium/pseuds/Deisderium
Summary: Steve didn't mean to start an Instagram, much less develop an art friendship with his most devoted follower, but it turns out to have been a good idea when the Winter Soldier shows up in DC.(The prompt is Loyalty/Devotion.)





	I, Too, Am Waiting For You

 

Steve didn't mean to start an Instagram.

The therapist SHIELD insisted on suggested he pick up something he used to do before the ice, so he'd taken a couple of art classes. And, well, he didn't want to keep every piece of paper he scribbled on, but the therapist and his instructor both suggested hanging on to his artwork so he could track his progress. So he started snapping a picture of every finished piece--not his sketchbooks, but the actual finished drawings and paintings that he spent time on--and after a couple of months of regular creation, he could look back at his earlier pieces and, yeah, he could see he was improving. His lines were more assured, his color choices bolder, and while he would never presume that his work would give other people feelings, he was more satisfied that the emotions he was trying to capture were actually getting across. It was nice to have a digital record of his work, an album he could carry around on his phone.

Natasha explained tagging to him, and at first he just marked his posts with the medium and subject, but as time went on, he got a little bit more playful and started tagging with what he intended and the pieces' shortcomings as well. To his bemusement, he picked up a few followers, and they often had words of appreciation and encouragement for him. It was sweet.

"You could have millions of followers if you dropped that you're Captain America," Nat said when he mentioned as much.

"Ugh, no." He barely kept himself from physically recoiling. "That would ruin it. Nobody would actually connect with the art." The second the words left his mouth, he asked himself silently if he was really that deeply pretentious, but she just nodded and slurped loudly at her smoothie.

His username had nothing at all to do with Captain America, just Steve; he was VHart, for Vinegar Hill art, after the neighborhood where he and Bucky had had an apartment before the war--in retrospect, probably the happiest time in Steve's life. Let people assume it was short for a name, Victor or Victoria Hart, why not. It didn't matter to him. He'd been surprised that anyone followed him at all. What mattered was recording his progress.

It was funny, the way people used the app. He had a couple of people that left notes or hearts immediately after he posted a piece, and there was the one guy, probably his most devoted follower--he commented on every single piece--who would go weeks without visiting, then leave a spree of likes and comments. It was flattering that the guy spent so much time in a row scrolling through Steve's art. His handle was in Cyrillic and looked like Becha, but Nat informed Steve it was pronounced Vesna and meant springtime.

On Steve's very first piece, a drawing of the view from his old apartment that he'd tagged #brooklyn, Vesna left a comment that Steve's style looked familiar and that he liked the cityscape. Steve wondered, a little nervously, if maybe the guy had seen Steve's sketchbooks in a museum exhibit or online. Steve replied with a thank you.

Then Vesna commented on the next three posts, and followed Steve.

Steve clicked through to Vesna's Instagram. There was one post. It was a corner of a gray cement building in the snow, sunlight a stark contrast to the building's shadow. One bedraggled shoot was trying to push through the snow, a bright point of green in an otherwise monochrome image. It struck Steve as sad and hopeful all at once. Steve followed him back, then sent him a direct message asking if he could paint his photo.

 _Fuck. really? Of course you can,_ Vesna replied.

So Steve did. He'd just taken a class on oils. It wasn't his strongest medium, but he wanted the challenge. And he was a little proud of how the painting turned out: the snow luminous, the concrete bleak, the struggling plant vibrant, triumphing over winter's end. Steve was pleased that he'd been able to render the light and the shadow the way he wanted to.

He sent it to Vesna in a message, wanting to get his okay before he published it for the world (or anyway, for his hundred-and-two followers). It took a couple of days for him to respond; a couple of days where Steve, who could often forget his phone entirely, jumped and picked it up immediately every time it buzzed. Finally, the notification came.

Steve was watching a movie with Natasha, his phone in his butt pocket. He pulled it out to check, expecting probably another junk email, but Vesna had written him back.

_Sorry for slow reply. Sometimes out of range for a while._

_It's fucking beautiful. thank you. I can't believe you got that out of my photo._

_of course you can post it. no photo credit please._

Steve found that he was smiling. Vesna hadn't been silent because he didn't like the painting; he'd been unable to reply. He replied. _Thanks. I'm really glad you like it_ , and slipped his phone back into his pocket. He looked back up to the movie. Natasha was staring at him and had paused the movie.

"You don't usually keep up with your phone," she said.

He gripped the back of his neck, embarrassed but not sure why. "I don't, usually. I painted something from a photo someone took, and I guess I was waiting on his reaction."

"Somebody I know?" Natasha probably knew all of his real-life friends, Steve realized.

"No, somebody from Instagram," he said.

"Hmm," Natasha said, and jammed a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

Steve took classes and workshops as he could work them around Avengers missions, experimented with different styles and mediums. He figured out that there were tutorials on YouTube, and fell into a delightful internet cave when he found out about Bob Ross. It didn't matter that the style was a little bland for him; the man's voice was more calming than Bruce's meditations.

Two months after he painted the snowscape, Vesna sent him a photo via direct message. It was of a sunrise over a thick pine forest. Somewhere far in the distance, a thin plume of smoke drifted up into the sky, a finger pointing at some distant tragedy in the middle of all the natural beauty. The juxtaposition appealed to Steve. Vesna had a good eye.

Steve wrote him back to tell him as much, and asked if he could paint this one, too. This time the reply came in minutes.

_You don't have to ask. That's always going to be cool with me, man. Just don't credit the photo to me._

_And thanks for wanting to paint it. You're really talented_.

Steve swiped his finger over his phone screen. _Just practice, really. And thank you._

This time, Steve used watercolors. He was more familiar with these than with oils, so the painting came together faster. The more he studied the photo, the more disturbing the smoke trail in the distance was. For some reason, he was sure it wasn't a forest fire. He enlarged the picture, and squinted. In all the pixels, he thought he could make out straight lines and right angles. He'd been right; there was a human disaster hidden behind all the beauty.

He sent the painting to Vesna before posting it again.

 _Fuck, how do you do this_? Vesna wrote back. _Thank you_.

Steve took a calligraphy workshop. It reminded him of lettering signs back in the thirties. It had been an ideal job for him, really; Bucky had been working in a factory, and Steve had been sick, mostly. He'd been so damn glad he could shoulder at least some of his share of the rent, not that Bucky had ever done a thing to make him feel like he wasn't carrying his weight. All those feelings had come from Steve.

He posted several calligraphy attempts, some with additional watercolor details. Shakespeare quotes, mostly. But he made a private piece for Vesna: the Cyrillic characters of his username, filled with flowers bursting out of the snow.

It was a while before Vesna replied. Steve wondered what it was that took him out of the constant connectivity of the modern world. Maybe he was a park ranger. It seemed plausible, given the picture of the forest. Steve himself had gaps in his posting schedule, given that sometimes he had to take time off to go fight self-aware robots--thanks, Tony--or mutant space pandas--thanks, Thor's brother who was supposed to be in alien jail--or whatever.

Steve's phone buzzed during a very dull stakeout of a black-market arms dealer's summer home. _I can't believe you made this for me_. Clint gave him a side eye as his phone vibrated. Steve flushed. He'd turned the ringer off but not accounted for the vibration.

"Is that your internet friend?" Natasha asked. She was leaning against the side of the van, monitoring all the screens at once. In theory, the arms dealer had bodyguards with enhancements SHIELD was very interested in. In practice, they had yet to turn up.

"Yes," Steve said, with as much dignity as he could muster. _Hope you like it, pal_ , Steve wrote. _My thanks for letting me paint your pictures._

"Cap, are you on Tinder?" Clint sat up, smiling.

"No," Steve said.

"Grindr?" Clint's smile metamorphosed into a grin.

"No."

"Steve's got an art buddy on Instagram." Nat leaned over the screens with unnecessary drama. Nothing was happening.

"Really," Clint said. "You left your phone on during a stakeout for your art buddy?"

"Accidentally left my phone on," Steve said, and turned it off; but not before checking to see Vesna's _Holy shit. Thanks_.

*

The next photo Vesna sent him was weirder. It was another outdoor shot: close focus on a pebbly beach, with blurry green waves in the background. That wasn't the weird part.

The weird part was the metal in the foreground.

Steve squinted at it, trying to figure out if it was a sculpture or what, but then he blinked, and like a cloud suddenly resolving itself into a turtle or Zeus's beard, it was a thumb and one-and-a-half fingers curled over a stone on the beach.

The hand was very shiny. It almost distracted Steve from the contrast, the thing that Steve had noticed about both of Vesna's photographs. Beside the clearly artificial metal fingers was a shallow pool of seawater left by the receding tide, only about as big as a handprint, and in it was a tiny jellyfish. Steve stared, enchanted. It was a ghost of a creature, barely its own outline, fragile and small and deadly, framed by metal fingers that spoke of terrible loss, and reclamation in the face of loss.

VHart: _Is that your hand?_

VHart: _Amazing picture, I should have said first. Thank you for sending it to me. You have a gift for capturing contrast._

Vesna _: It's my hand._

VHart: _I'm sorry for whatever happened that you had to get a prosthetic hand._

Vesna: *typing*

Vesna: *typing*

Vesna: _Thanks. I thought you would like the jellyfish._

VHart: _I do._

Vesna: _Please don't paint this one. I just wanted you to see it._

VHart: _Could I paint it if I only showed it to you?_

VHart: _You can say no of course._

VHart: _I know privacy is important to you--I'd love to paint it, just for you. It's beautiful. You take wonderful photographs._

Vesna: _Okay. I trust you not to post it._

*

Steve didn't hear from Vesna for a few weeks. But that was all right; he was working on the painting. Rendering the metal hand, he found the barely-there reflection of the jellyfish and the water, and it felt like a gift: the hard, smooth, shiny fingers and the insubstantial flesh of the sea creature. He remembered his former small self more than he had in years. How fragile he had been, how determined to sting. And then the serum. And then he was a weapon.

What had happened to Vesna?

Steve finished the painting of Vesna's hand. He sent it as a message with the note _thanks for trusting me with this._

*

Steve hadn't heard back from Vesna when everything went to shit. Nat lied to him on a mission, and Fury showed him SHIELD's fucking brain control device, and then an assassin blew up Fury's car and Fury showed up in Steve's apartment, holding up his phone with the message that his apartment was bugged. Steve had barely begun to process his anger and the stomach-churning nausea that SHIELD was compromised when someone shot Fury through the fucking wall.

And of fucking course his neighbor was a an agent. At least he could leave her with Fury as he took off after the would-be assassin. The man was fast. Steve barely caught him on the rooftop. He threw his shield, aimed to incapacitate, and then the man reached out with his metal goddamn arm and caught his shield. Steve knew the pattern of the plates. He'd spent hours drawing and painting it. Steve barely managed to choke out, "Vesna?"

The man shook himself like he'd been slapped. Steve's shield fell to the rooftop with a clunk. Blue-gray eyes above a mask like a muzzled animal's met Steve's gaze. The man was all leather straps and weapons, but he looked at Steve like he was trying to fight his way back from something.

Steve let his arms fall to his side. "Vesna?" he said again. "You sent me the picture of your hand with the jellyfish. I painted your photos."

His eyes were so, so wide. Steve closed the distance between them. Vesna was shaking, fine full-body tremors wracking him. Steve reached out, slowly, so slowly, so Vesna could stop him if he wanted, and pulled the mask off his face.

It fell from his suddenly-numb fingers and landed next to the shield. Steve felt like he'd been gut-punched. "Bucky?" he whispered.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" Bucky said.

Steve took a breath like he would put pressure on a bleeding wound. "You are. But you're Vesna, too, right? I'm VHart. But I'm also Steve. I'm--I'm your friend."

Bucky flinched. "I don't. I don't remember." He looked up, his gaze suddenly fierce. "But I know you."

"It's fine," Steve said, although it manifestly wasn't. Fury was on the floor in his apartment, maybe dying. Bucky had shot him. Bucky was alive, but with no memory, and he'd been turned into some kind of bondage assassin, and he had a metal fucking arm. But he was alive. Everything else, they could figure out.

Steve stretched his hand out and waited, hoping.

Bucky reached out and took it. His fingers were warm, the skin rough with the same calluses Steve had from holding a gun.

"They're expecting me back," Bucky whispered.

"Who?"

"Handlers." Bucky shrugged his metal shoulder. Steve felt a deep and abiding rage settle into him, nestling around his ribs like it was making a permanent home.

"Fuck them fucking sideways," Steve said. "You're staying with me."

Bucky's shoulders settled, some tension leaving them. "I'd like that."

Steve got out his phone. "Let me just make a call."

*

Of course Natasha had a safe house. Fury had said not to trust anyone, but Steve couldn't do this alone.

"Steve," Nat said. "Why is the Winter Soldier taking a nap on my safe house floor?"

Bucky was sitting against the wall, hands clasped around his knees. His eyes slitted open. "I'm not asleep."

"The what?"

"The slugs that were taken out of Fury had no rifling. I've seen that before." She glared at Bucky. "He's a ghost story. He's linked to dozens of assassinations over fifty years, Steve. He shot an engineer through my stomach in Odessa in 2009."

Bucky flinched. Steve spread his hands and gave Natasha his widest eyes. "Okay, well, he's also Bucky Barnes." And Vesna the Instagram photographer, but this probably wasn't the time to go into that.

Natasha blew out a breath. It was as good as a shout of surprise from anyone else. "I think I need some context here," she said.

*

They pieced it together. Between Hydra and the Russians, they'd tortured and mind-wiped Bucky and turned him into a killing machine. It made Steve sick.

But Bucky had started putting himself back together. He'd stolen a phone on one of his missions, and left himself notes about himself, what he remembered, and putting together what he could between missions and mindwipes. He'd gotten on social media, for fuck's sake. He'd searched the tags for Brooklyn and found Steve's drawing, of all the pieces of art on the whole internet. He didn't remember Steve, but he recognized the view and the way Steve drew. And that fragile connection had been enough to break through his conditioning when Steve called him by his username.

"Unbelievable," Natasha said. "But I guess I believe it." She knelt down in front of Bucky, who watched her warily. "I've been where you are," she said. "I left the Red Room and had to break my conditioning. It was hard, but I did it, and so can you. I'm going to help."

There was a lot more to it, of course; SHIELD was still compromised, and it turned out it was Hydra and Zola's digital ghost. Natasha, Steve, and Bucky had to go on the run, with the help of Steve's new friend Sam, because Nat's safe houses were all SHIELD, and all of their considerable resources were turned against Steve and Natasha now. Fury was still dead, until he wasn't. But in the end, Steve and Nat and Sam and Bucky took down Project Insight, Bucky scything his way through Hydra attackers to help Steve get the chip to the helicarriers. It was almost too easy, the two of them together, falling back into fighting side-by-side like they had in the war, even if Bucky didn't remember it.

"All right, Maria, give us a minute to get out of here and you can blow it," Steve said.

"How are we going to do that?" Bucky said. The helicarrier was sinking already, and the wind whipped Bucky's hair around his face.

"Guess we're going to have to jump." Steve looked out of the window. They were over the Potomac. It could have been worse.

"Of course we are," Bucky muttered, then looked up. "You with me?"

"Till the end of the line," Steve said. Bucky stared at him, eyes going wide, and then the two of them jumped, together.

*

"I remembered," Bucky said as they helped each other out of the water. "When you said that. Did you say it to me before?"

"You said it to me." Steve swallowed. "After my mother's funeral."

Bucky shook his head. Drops of water flicked off his loose hair. "I wish I remembered more." He lifted his head and looked directly at Steve, biting his lip. "What if I never remember more?"

Steve didn't really think he could hug the distress off Bucky's face, but it couldn't hurt to try. Bucky tensed, and Steve froze, but then Bucky's arms wrapped around him and they just held tightly to each other. Steve was wet and a little cold and smelled like river water and smoke, and there was nowhere he'd rather be than right there. "It won't matter to me, Bucky. I mean, it'll matter because I want you to have the memories, but I'm not going anywhere. The only thing that'll get rid of me is if you don't want me around."

Bucky choked out a sound that was part laughter, part sob. "I don't think that's going to happen, Steve."

*

Some of Bucky's memories came back to him, fragments of Brooklyn. Fragments of horror, sometimes, things that had been done to him, things he had done. He tried writing them down, but Steve could tell when he was frustrated with it.

"Fuck it," Bucky said one evening when he'd been struggling over the words for a while. "Did I ever draw when we were kids?"

"A little bit." Steve handed him a blank sketchbook. "You want to try?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. "I think I do."

Steve wasn't going to suggest Bucky make an Instagram for his murder drawings, but he could see the progress as Bucky's hand got better at bringing to life what his mind's eye saw. Steve made himself look at every one, even the ones that were mostly body parts and blood. They were all part of how Bucky had gotten to here. 

They weren't all awful. Bucky drew his sister. The Howling Commandos. Bucky and Steve on the fire escape. At the movies. Steve drawing, Bucky reading on the chair at their old apartment. Whenever Bucky asked, Steve told him what he remembered.

Then one day Bucky passed him his sketchbook and Steve froze. Bucky had drawn them kissing, not in Brooklyn, but in their living room now. It was--

It was a technically adept drawing, and one part of Steve's brain was delighted at Bucky's artistic progress. The rest of Steve was frozen at the sight of his deepest desire laid bare. In the drawing, Bucky's metal hand caressed Steve's jaw, the plates clearly articulated, tenderness in every line. 

"Did we ever do that?" Bucky asked. 

Steve made himself meet his eyes. "No," he managed. 

"I wanted to," Bucky said, not looking away. Steve felt like he'd been electrified. 

"Yeah," Steve said. "I did too. I do." 

Bucky's right hand lifted to Steve's face, traced over his eyebrow. Steve shut his eyes and leaned into the touch. The space under his skin felt raw, like maybe he had been stung and was now beginning to heal.

He opened his eyes. Bucky was watching him. He pulled him closer, as slow as he could manage, until there was only the smallest space between them, and bridged it with a kiss.

"You really want this?" Bucky said when they paused for breath.

"I want as much of you as you want me to have," Steve said.

"Really? Because I want a lot." Bucky's lips curved against Steve's, a smile secret to just the two of them. "But you can draw me the next one."

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what happened here. "What if social media?" I thought, and this fic fell out.
> 
> The title is from a Weezer song.


End file.
